Qimonda Asks Potential Investors to Present Bid By End of May

Qimonda, a struggling maker of dynamic random access memory, still has not found an investor, who would make a bid for the company. In case the insolvency administration does not find an investor by the end of the month, Qimonda may be liquidated.

“According to what we have heard from Mr. Jaffé, no investor has showed substantial interest in Qimonda,” a participant of a meeting between insolvency administrator Michael Jaffé and the remaining staff in Dresden and Munich told EETimes web-site.

Mr. Jaffé reportedly said that he had asked potential investors to substantiate their interest by end of May at the latest. In case no bids placed, the administrator will be forced to proceed with insolvency procedures, which means that the liquidation is becoming a very likely outcome.

Sources familiar with the proceedings reportedly indicated that so far serious interests has not been expressed in Qimonda as a DRAM manufacturer, but only in parts of the company, such as intellectual property or specific parts of the equipment.

At present Qimonda’s fab in Germany is in stand-by mode, however, this also costs additional money and creditors of the company are unlikely to continue waiting for an investor while the asset becomes less and less attractive.

Qimonda’s termination of OEM outsourcing from Inotera and Winbond and shut down the U.S. facility has resulted in the huge market share drop. Market share of the Germany-based DRAM vendor in Q1 was merely 4.7%, according to DRAMeXchange market tracker.